Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1887-08-12


the real workingmen and the blatherskites
who set up as their leaders, but whose only
work is done with their mouths.
Democratic CiviI-service Reform aud
the Nugwumps.
The repeated and apparently deliberate
violations Of the spirit Of the civil service
reform act under President Cleveand's adj
ministraton have become so frequent and
so glariug that even the most hopeful of his
mugwump supporters and apologizers are
beginning to acknowledge their dsappoint-
ment. Even the men who voted for Mr..
Cleveland on that issue are, like George
William Curtis, coming rapidly not only to
see. but TO admit, that the spoilsmen are in
the saddle aud that civil service reform has
been largely swept away before the de
mands of patronnge-mongers whom Mr.
Cleveland has placed in office. In his ad-
dress before the national civil service reform
league at Newport last week, Mr. Curtis,
while still expressing confidence in the Pres
ident's good intentions, was constrained to
admit that 'it would be great wrong TO
the cause of which the league is the author
lied national representative il it did not
plainly and emphatically declare that it does
not regard the administration as in any
strict sense Of the words civil-service-
reform administration.
Mr.. Curtis, who has studied the figures,
finds that the civil service law applies to
only If, 600 out of about 115, 600 federal Of
fees so that the mere keeping of the law
is not reform. The law may be obeyed and
the spoilsmen run riot all through the ser
vice at the same time in fact, Mr. Curtis
tells u.s. they have run riot. There are
about IS, 600 chief offices, the holders of
which, appointed by the President, control
more or less patronage and form the great
political machine at which the reform is
really directed. Mr.. Cleveland has been in
office twenty-nine months, and in that time
he has filed $4,000 of these offices with
Democrats. Mr. Curtis feels compelled to
concede that this looks amazingly like a
clean sweep and wholly unlike reform
When he turns from the figures and looks
at the moral forces at work, he finds little
to reassure him. Mr.. Cleveland has given
Boston a Saltonstall and has kept in place
in New York "A Pearson, but against these
two appointments are to be debited thous-
and bad ones German snaps his fingers at
reform in Maryland, as does Hiram Atkins
in this state, and launches his Higginses and
Rasins upon the political field in defiance of
the President. Vest and Cockrell in Miss
ouri, Voorhees, and Holman in Indiana, and
Randall in Pennsylvania ride roughshod
over reform and boisterously praise Mr..
Cleveland's administration. Virginia has
been given over to the bourbon Democracy
bound hand and foot, and in all parts of the
country the men who most loudly demand
Cleveland's denomination are VIGOROUSLY
hostile to every principle of reform. In
the same breath they sheer at reform and
glorify Cleveland Nobody knows this bet
ter than Mr. Curtis, and while his sympa-
thies move him to apologize for what his
honesty forces him to condemn, he realizes
that he and those he represents will soon be
compelled to make practical choice be-
tween their new allies, who have betrayed
them and their old comrades
But Mr. Curtis is not the only sorrowfu
mugwump. The New York Evening Post
whose sympathies are with the administra
ton, calls attention to the post-onice and
custom house at Chicago, where two of Mr.
Cleveland's appointees, Postmaster judo
and Collector Seeberger, have gone delibe
rately to work to make an entire change il
the clerks under the civil service rules
This they have done, until almost all tn,
| old clerks have been dismissed and theii
| places filled with Democratic workers.
The record of the Presidents redoubtabl,
appointment clerk, Eugene Higgins, ha,
been laid before the chief executive, ant
reputable citizens of Baltimore have writ
ten him that Higgins was guilty of com
| plicity in criminal frauds at the election
held in 1879. 1t is alleged that he sough
to promote the election of candidates fo
the state senate by the forgery of names OF
the poll books, fraudulent protests by hire,
reporters on absent voters, and ruifanl
intimidation of decent and orderly citizen
at the polls" The New York Times, afte
quoting the words of the Presidents orde
of July IA, 1886, concerning the interfer
ence of federal Office holders in elections
makes bold to say The practices con
demned in this order are precisely those o
which Higgins, Rasin and Thomas hav
been guilty. A neglect to punish them
equivalent to the withdrawal of the orde
from which we have quoted But tn
friends of civil service reform in Baltimor
ought to see to it that the issue is fairl
made, in order that the President may hav
no room for doubt as to his duty, nor tn
people as to his purpose"
Practically it is matter of small conse
quence whether Mr. Cleveland abandone,
his announced reform purposes because h
is an intriguer and a charlatan, or becaus
he is weak He started out with a grea
flourish of trumpets as a reformer, and 70
months he appeared to be endeavoring t
hold back the famished horde of Democrat
place-holders, so that there was no question
of the hostility which by far the great ma
jority of his party felt for him. But h
was steadily giving them all they asked, un
til now there is, as Mr.. Curtis is reluctant
forced to acknowledge, as complete part
san reconstruction of the service as is pos
sible This being the fact the friends O
civil service reform who sought to furthe
their cause by putting a party in powe
whose every instinct and tradition was op
posed to it, will hereafter be cautious abou
repeating their error.